The Woman with the Hole in Her Brain

Today I read this article about a woman who is missing her cerebellum. The twenty-four year old woman went to a Chinese hospital because of dizziness and nausea and found that there was a hole in her brain where the cerebellum should be. The cerebellum is a small structure located under and to the back of the brain and controls voluntary movement, balance, and learning. Although problems with the cerebellum normally lead to severe mental impairment, movement disorders, or death, this woman only had slight problems, showing the resilience and plasticity of the brain.

After reading the article, I had to speculate what would happen if some other part of the brain was missing or severely damaged. For example, what would a person be like if they had no basal ganglia, a group of neurons in the middle of the brain connected to the thalamus? Normally, the basal ganglia controls voluntary movement, learning, eye movement, cognition, emotion, and decision making. If the basal ganglia were missing or damaged, then these functions would not work properly; for example, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease, which are caused by the degeneration of the basal ganglia, cause loss of motor control. Eventually, these diseases also lead to the death of the victim.